Why on earth is the Colorado Attorney General at a groundbreaking for a Cargill Housing Development? What did the Glass jury forewoman hope for with her media tour?
Why on earth is the Colorado Attorney General at a groundbreaking for a Cargill Housing Development?
I read the Ft Morgan Times article linked first below after seeing our AG Phil Weiser tweet about how meaningful it was for him to be out for the groundbreaking of a new housing development sponsored by Cargill and meant to help provide affordable housing to their employees.
The first question I had was why on earth Colorado's AG would be involved. Local leaders? Cargill big wigs? Yeah. Makes sense.
My curiosity was piqued enough to email the AG's press secretary.
I asked the following:
--Was he involved in the prior work of this project? Any of the steps preceding this?
--Did he talk to anyone else, visit anywhere else, or stay in or around the Ft Morgan area after the groundbreaking?
To which the spokesman responded:
"Attorney General Weiser has attended official events in Morgan County every year he has been in office (except 2020 due to the pandemic). He is the attorney general for all Coloradans. In October 2022, at the invitation of the United Way and local leaders, AG Weiser attended the Fort Morgan Housing Action Team meeting to learn more about housing needs in the area. He met Cargill officials and they told him about their innovative Riverside Housing plan. Cargill invited the AG Weiser and other state officials to attend the April 26 groundbreaking ceremony, and he was proud to attend. You can contact Katie Smith, Assistant Vice President for State Government Affairs at Cargill, for more details about the project."
Funny he mentioned contacting Cargill. I put similar questions to them and have not yet received a response.
I followed up with the AG's spokesman, pressing him on whether (and/or what) else besides the press conference the AG did. I received the following:
"He had a full morning in Morgan County and was also on The Big Morning Show on KFTM."
For your reference, I found and linked to that second below.
Cargill is welcome to invite whomever they'd like. Big Morning Shows are free to interview whomever they like and ask whatever kinds of questions they like. The part I object to is the "freebies" that these folks give politicians.
By "freebies" here I mean something along the lines of what I've talked about in the past with Polis and Fox News. Yeah, Weiser went to a meeting and got invited back so he could stand with a shovel while they broke ground even though, by my reckoning, he had little to do with this. Then he gets on a show where they toss him so many softballs that I'm concerned about the host's rotator cuff (hope he warmed up!).
I don't think you need to be an aggressive jerk or to exclude them, but perhaps a fuller picture would be nice. Maybe they could ask simple questions like I did: what involvement did you have here?
One last other thing, along the same track as above. I can't speak for Fort Morgan or for how other people feel, but I have little feeling myself that Mr. Weiser is anywhere near my AG.
How soon Big Morning Shows and others seem to forget his closing down churches during COVID, how he seems to have a HUGE concern for abortion but little for things like our Second Amendment rights (or freedom of speech as has been my personal experience given my testimony for CPW and having to threaten court action to get his office to do more about it than toss a few internet links at me).
And, while he may be out in Fort Morgan all the time (maybe--and likely only for carefully choreographed events like these a la Gov Polis), I can say that his only visits to Logan County I'm aware of have been for meetings with local officials.
And we only see those AFTER they've happened.
What was hoped for here?
I'm not sure why this case and not another, but the Christian Glass trial became something of a cause celebre among the (especially among the left-leaning) press.
If you hadn't followed it too closely, the result of the trial was that the jury deadlocked on a murder charge for the deputy who shot Mr. Glass but did convict on reckless endangerment.
Shortly on the heels of this deadlock and hung jury came the articles (see links 1 - 4 below for a scattering) where the forewoman of the jury talked about the lone juror who absolutely refused to convict on murder.
The forewoman apparently felt the lone holdout was (quoting her from the CPR article linked first below) "unreasonable". This is perhaps partly because the forewoman has the holdout juror saying (again quoting from the CPR article): "‘I'm never going to convict on murder and we should just hang this jury right now'".
Why this juror was dead set against a murder conviction is something only that person knows. What the holdout actually said is something that only those 12 people in the room can know.
The reasons to hold out could be any number of things. Absent being told by the holdout juror him or herself, it could be a deep-set conviction about innocence, bias toward police, jury nullification, or some mix.
In some of the other articles there is some speculation as to motive, but I'm the kind who prefers to try and assess motive directly so I won't go into that much. Besides, the holdout's motive is not the point here.
As I see it, the verdict is what it is. With a hung jury, the prosecutors can try again, and apparently this is what they'll do. The article linked last below details what will almost certainly be their second bite at the apple.
What I found curious here is the fact that the forewoman took it upon herself to go to multiple press outlets who, of course, found the sensational story compelling and ran with it.
I gather that the forewoman here found the story surrounding Mr. Glass' death to be quite compelling and emotionally-charged. I wonder, however, if the roles were reversed what she would think of someone on a grand tour talking about HER being unreasonable.
For example, let's say the shooting didn't happen and charges were brought against Mr. Glass. If she, the foreperson, was the lone holdout to acquit Mr. Glass because she thought he was having a "mental health crisis" (something I saw in many articles), how would she view articles similar to this?
Articles where the alternate-reality jury foreperson was in every media outlet they could find calling her (anonymously to be fair) "unreasonable".
I don't know if the actual holdout's motives were spurred by a genuine conviction, but let's pretend they were. Is that conviction any less meaningful or reasonable than the absolute conviction that the cop was guilty or murder? Does the holdout's being just as strident albeit on the opposite side of the forewoman make their vote somehow less appropriate?
The forewoman said that the reason for coming forward was to encourage the prosecutors to try again. I can't read her mind any more than I can anyone else's, but I'll be damned if I can't get the feeling out of my brain that there's more going here. An aspect of punishment? Shaming?
I would hope not.
I also find the media's eagerness to take up this story to be troubling. An eagerness marked in its lack of balance, in its putting forward one side, and one side only, of the story.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/28/christian-glass-jury-murder-trial-hold-out-conviction/
https://www.greeleytribune.com/2024/05/01/christian-glass-andrew-buen-police-shooting-second-trial/
I drive by the future ghetto almost daily. In the name of subsidized labor, Exit 80 at I-76 will soon get a dose of that good old forced cultural enrichment that's already made the area around the Post Office feel so welcoming and safe.